April 13th, 2009 by Kevin Ngo

Let me give you a strategy on how to ensure your success in whatever goal you may have that you’ve been failing to achieve. Whether or not you decide to do what I’m about to outline will give you a good indication of how committed you really are to achieving your goal.

If you know your goal is merely a wish rather than an absolute must, then you can stop reading this. Here are some other self improvement articles that may be of more use to you right now or you can check out the motivational videos page. If you’re completely serious about achieving your goal however, let’s continue with how to ensure your success.

What Causes Failure in the First Place

The number one challenge most people get into when pursuing a goal, is having to deal with and overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of obtaining the goal. That means if you are able to get through any setback that comes at you, assuming that you’re doing the right things, you will eventually achieve your goal.

So the secret to ensure your success is to figure out a way or set up a situation where no matter what obstacles show up, you will not give up until you reach your goal. The tools I have provided for you on my website will help motivate and inspire you to keep going even in the face of defeat after defeat. Different tools will work for different people.

What I am about to show you, however, will work for almost anyone, given that you are completely serious about achieving your goal.

Step 1

The first thing I’d like you to do is have your one specific goal in front of you. Actually write it down either on paper or in a word document.

Okay, so now that you have your goal in front of you, I’d like you to ask yourself a question. Do you believe you can actually achieve it? Being serious about achieving a goal and believing you can achieve it are two different things. In order to achieve you goals, you must have both. I will be writing about how to increase your beliefs in another article, but for now, I want to give you the strategy to help make your motivation last in order to ensure your success.

You know that at the beginning of any pursuit of a goal is usually the time when your motivation and drive is the highest. Of course, as time goes by, as you are met with failure after failure, your motivation will tend to decrease. Sooner or later you may get to the point where you start to reconsider your goal or just outright quit.

So how do you keep going towards your goals even when things get tough and your motivation level plummets? Let me ask you this. Are people more likely to make it on time for an important appointment or to some unimportant party? This may sound like a silly question but it ties into the answer that will ensure your success in achieving your goal which is…

You must put yourself on the line!

Here’s what I mean. You must make the consequences of not achieving your goal more painful than staying on course.

Think about a time when you told yourself you were going to do something but ended up procrastinating or just not getting it done. How did you feel? Perhaps a bit disappointed in yourself? Or maybe you just shrugged it off.

Now think of a time when you gave someone your word, you promised someone you would do something, but you didn’t. How did that feel compared to the first situation? I’m willing to bet that if you’re a person who values your integrity and reputation then either you felt 100 times worse or you’ve simply never gone back on your word so this wouldn’t apply to you.

There are several ways to put yourself on the line in order to ensure your success. All of them involve someone else other than just you. Yes, you have to make your goal public. Here are a few tips.

How to Put Yourself On The Line

1. Make Your Consequences Public

Tell a group of your friends or family, preferably people who you know will support you instead of put you down, what you intend to achieve and by when AND what you will do if you don’t achieve it. The consequence you come up with has to be big enough that you will do whatever it takes, within moral and ethical boundaries of course, to achieve your goal.

Now for some of you, just telling your close friends and family that you will achieve your goal is enough to propel you into constant action because the embarrassment of not achieving your goal would be too much for you to handle.

For the rest of you, your consequence should be something that will put you in a situation where it would be unfathomable for you to quit because the pain of staying on track would be heaven compared to the consequence of quitting. Putting yourself in this situation will help ensure your success.

2. Make It Uncomfortable

Let’s say your goal is to lose weight. You could give all your clothes away besides 2-3 outfits. So until you reach your goal, you will be forced to wear the same outfits over and over again.

3. Make It Financial

You could go further. Let’s say your goal is to quit smoking. You would announce to all of your friends that you have decided to quit. Now your consequence would be that every time one of them catches you smoking, you have to give each of them $100. The amount has to be something that you REALLY don’t want to have to pay, otherwise it won’t create enough pain for you to keep away from the cigarettes. You will just end up saying, “Oh hell, I’ll just pay the money!”

4. Make It Embarrassing

Let’s take it even further. Let’s say your goal is to sell a certain amount of volume for the quarter that’s achievable if you got yourself to do what you had to do. You’ve been struggling with this for a while and it’s because you couldn’t get yourself to make those sales calls. The consequence of not following through could be that you have to sleep in the car for a week and of course, the whole sales office would know about this.

5. Make It Disastrous

Let’s take it one step further. Let’s say your goal is to make your failing marriage work. The only problem is you have a bad temper problem which is the main cause of the failing marriage. So your goal would actually be to not blow up every time something goes wrong. Your consequence would be to just sign the divorce papers and end the relationship and suffer losing your loved ones.

Some of you may read these consequences and automatically chicken out. You may be thinking that there’s no way you’re going to put yourself through the embarrassment or possibility of financial loss. If you’re thinking this, then what’s that say about your commitment level towards your goal?

If you really want to ensure your success in achieving a goal you have tried many times but failed at obtaining, you must put yourself on the line. Until you create a situation where you will have massive pain for NOT achieving your goal, you will more than likely come up with excuses and justifications to quit.

Step 2

Write down under your goal what the consequence will be if you don’t achieve your goal.

The consequences above are just examples. Come up with what will work for you. Some people don’t care about losing money. Some won’t mind the embarrassment. You know your own hot buttons so make a consequence that you will do almost anything to avoid. When you make that level of commitment to your goal, you will ensure your success in achieving them.

Step 3

Make a copy of it and give it to everyone who’s involved. This will further your commitment to your goal and ensure your success.

Step 4

The final step is to update your progress to the people you announced your goal to every week. This will help ensure your success because it’ll keep you focused and accountable especially if this is a goal that will take longer than a few months to achieve.

So there you have it. If you actually do this (stats show that most of you reading this won’t), you will prove to yourself your seriousness and commitment in making your life the way you want it. You will be part of the few who actually goes out and make their dreams a reality instead of just talking about it. Show the world and prove to yourself what you’re truly made of.

As an added step, in the comments section below, tell me and everyone else reading this article what your goal is and when you are committed to achieving it by. Again, making it public will help ensure your success.

Here is my personal goal.

I will write and submit 100 articles within the next 60 days. (Won’t be shown on this site per submission guideline reasons but you can check up on me through my Ezine Articles profile. I started today so my deadline date will be June 12th, 2009. There’s 3 old articles on there right now and it takes up to a week for the articles to be approved and published.

The consequence I have for NOT achieving this goal would be to shut down this website.

To be honest, it took me a few minutes to write the consequence down. I’m actually shaking a bit. Part of it is fear of failure but part of it is also excitement.

Something crazy just happened. After writing my commitment and consequence down and after the initial shakes went away, this feeling of resolve just came over me. I had this intention for about a week now and started on it today but had some doubts. Now, I have no doubts. I have absolute confidence I will complete this goal.

My other goal, well, more like a task, is to join a Toast Masters Club. I will be attending a meeting sometime this month.

Update (4/30/09) I have decided to take a different approach. No, I am not backing down from my goal. In fact, I am actually doing way more than I said I would. I’m at about 60 articles right now with 12 days left until the half way mark.

At the current rate that I’m going at, I will actually achieve my goal of writing 100 articles in 30 days instead 60 days as originally planned. The public announcement of the consequences did a great job of getting me to take massive action. This stuff works if you actually do it.

The link to the directory above currently only shows 8 new articles. I have the rest stored on my laptop. I’ll be submitting more of them there, but I’m readjusting my strategy. It’s always good to check your results and adjust your actions. Doing what doesn’t work over and over again just doesn’t make sense.

I’m actually submitting my articles to multiple sites so it’s going to be hard to keep track of everything. I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I’m planning to put all of the articles I write in an ebook format perhaps. That way, all my readers check out the stuff I’ve been writing. Well, that’s all for the update. You can email if you have any questions or better yet, leave a comment. Thanks. Hope your goals are going well.

Until next time…

Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.

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